Mary Elizabeth Winstead covers ASOS July 2020. The magazine caught up with the lovely 27-year-old actress and talked about her career, living in Los Angeles, fashion, and Sundance. “I look at Sundance every year. And every year, I’m looking to see who’s the breakout, who’s the new talent that’s going to excite me. The fact that I got to be that this year… Sundance has always been a big goal of mine, so to be there with a film that I really care about… Amazing,” she says.
Speaking about her role as a recovering alcoholic in ‘Smashed’, Mary Elizabeth confesses that, “I don’t have a lot of experience with alcoholism in my life. Personally, or even with people that I grew up around. I grew up in a pretty dry household, in a very dry city. I grew up in Utah – there’s not a lot of alcohol flowing there! It was daunting, but I went to a lot of AA meetings, plus the co-writer, and one of the producers, are both in recovery, so they were amazing resources.”
“I don’t think I slept for a week, we just threw ourselves into it for 19 days, but it was worth it. Even for an indie, it was very indie. Every day you were giving it everything, and knowing that it was going to amount to something great,” the actress added.
Mary Elizabeth reveals in the interview with ASOS that, “At a certain point last year, I said the next film that I do has to be an independent film, and it has to be something that I can really sink my teeth into. I just got lucky that it turned out to be ‘Smashed’, because I was ready to do two scenes in anything. I just wanted to feel what it was like to do something intimate. I can’t believe they trust me with it. It’s always hard for people to believe that an actor can do something they haven’t already done before, so I’m very grateful that they gave me the opportunity.”
Winstead stars in ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’, also out this year. “At first, I wasn’t sure what it was, and the title sounded so ridiculous. But then I read the script and it was just so good and so unexpected. I felt like this action-adventure, epic tale – a historic period drama rather than an over-the-top, gory, horror vampire movie. It felt like it could have been our history. And I could really believe it could have happened, like, ‘Oh, this is just the secret life of our president, but we just didn’t know about it ’till now.’ I really didn’t expect that, because that sounds so ludicrous,” the actress told ASOS.
Speaking about living in Los Angeles, the actress confesses that, “I do love L.A., it took me a while though. For years and years, I thought that I would just live here part-time, because I didn’t think I was an L.A. person. But since I’ve found the neighborhood I live in now, I love it and I miss it when I’m away. This feels like home. Throughout my teen years, when we’d come to L.A. for work, we stayed in one area, and I never really saw this side of the city. I think my mom thought it was unsafe.”
When it comes to shopping, the young star admits that, “I love online shopping. I’m obsessed with it. I don’t really like trying things on, I get really exhausted. By the end of a day’s shopping, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.” She next adds that, “If I do shopping, it’s usually window-shopping. I look at things and get ideas of what I like. Yesterday, I was at Barneys and couldn’t afford anything, but I like to figure out how I can recreate it for myself in a more affordable way. I’ve been buying longer skirts lately, which is part of my growing-up phase. I’ve been wearing short dresses for years and I don’t want to worry about bending over and showing my backside to everyone, which I feel like I’ve been doing for a long time.”
As on her fashion approach, Winstead explains that, “I go back and forth between the ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s. I like the idea of vintage, but still being very clean and modern. Bold shapes and colors, but nothing too fussy. I don’t really like the ’50s party dresses as much as I used to. Now I’m looking at a much more streamlined silhouette, I guess a little more adult, a little more grown-up.”
Photos courtesy of ASOS